DiMaggio shot: Hostage team sent in after helicopter crew spots campsite in Idaho woods
Family elated: Father en route to scene to reunite with his daughter, who is ‘doing OK’

The weeklong search for missing Lakeside teen Hannah Anderson and James DiMaggio, the family friend suspected of kidnapping her after killing her mother and brother, ended Saturday afternoon when an FBI agent shot and killed him at a remote campsite in central Idaho.

Law officers searching by helicopter spotted the camp near Morehead Lake and a hostage-response ground team was sent in about 5:20 p.m., authorities said. They provided no details about the shooting or the rescue pending further investigation.

It was the outcome her family had been hoping and praying for, and the one his feared.

“It’s now healing time,” Brett Anderson, Hannah’s father, said in a text message to CNN. He was on his way to Idaho to be with his daughter, who according to county Sheriff Bill Gore “appears to be in pretty good shape.”

Elsewhere in San Diego County, there was euphoria. “I literally fell on the floor crying with tears of happiness for the first time in a week,” said Erik Campbell, 33, godfather of the slain brother, Ethan Anderson, 8. “It was a reaction that I wouldn’t have thought would have happened.”

Hannah’s grandmother, Sara Britt, told reporters, “It’s the best news we could have asked for.” Britt said she now will be able to focus on the loss of her daughter and grandson. “We’ll get through it as a family,” she said. “We are strong.”

Andrew Spanswick, a friend of the DiMaggio family, said, “We’re disappointed that we didn’t get him back alive and that we can’t hear his side of the story.”

Spanswick said he and DiMaggio’s sister were worried all day that this would be the ending. As the week progressed, they grew convinced that depression had set in. He said Saturday was the 15th anniversary of the suicide of DiMaggio’s father.

“I thought he was probably going to die either by his own hand or someone else’s,” Spanswick said. “I guess in some way it’s what he wanted, but it’s unfortunate that it couldn’t have ended in another way.”

Law officers began swarming the area near Cascade on Thursday, after horseback riders the night before reported seeing a pair of backpackers who matched the description of DiMaggio, a 40-year-old telecommunications technician, and Hannah, a 16-year-old El Capitan High junior, near Morehead Lake. They said the two had a tent and appeared to be in good shape.

Friday morning, DiMaggio’s blue 2013 Nissan Versa was found about six miles from where the two were spotted, covered in brush with its license plates removed. Waves of federal agents flew in to join the search.

More than 250 were on the hunt Saturday: on foot, horseback and ATV, and in the air. Tracking dogs were also used. They were working in a wilderness area full of steep mountains, thick forests and deep canyons, a place known eerily as the River of No Return.

Boulevard tragedy

DiMaggio’s death means sheriff’s detectives may never know what set off the tragedy that began last Sunday at his home in Boulevard, the rural, sparsely populated East County enclave about 60 miles from downtown San Diego.

It was there, detectives say, that he killed Hannah’s mother, Christina Anderson, 44, a medical therapist, and set his two-story, log-cabin house on fire. It burned to the ground, and found in the rubble were the remains of Ethan and the family’s dog.

DiMaggio and Hannah were missing, triggering an Amber Alert that started in San Diego County and spread throughout the West. Broadcast by the media, that alert caught the attention of the horseback riders when they came back from wilderness area on Wednesday.

Divorced, with no kids of his own, DiMaggio befriended the Andersons years ago through the father, who also worked in the telecommunications industry. He was considered part of the family. The children called him “Uncle Jim.”

When Brett Anderson separated from his wife and moved recently to Tennessee for work, DiMaggio agreed to help watch the children. He took Hannah to gymnastics practice and Ethan to football workouts.

“He looked after those kids like they were his own,” DiMaggio’s sister, Lora Robinson, said last week.

But there were also reports that Hannah had begun to find his attention creepy. A few months ago, he remarked that he had a “crush” on her and if he was her age he would date her, according to one of her friends. When he took Hannah to Hollywood for her 16th birthday in July, they reportedly got into an argument over how much time she spent on her cellphone.

Last weekend, Christina Anderson and her children went to Boulevard to visit DiMaggio. They had been there before, up the dirt road on Ross Avenue. It was a place where they could shoot BB guns and ride motorbikes. A 10-year-old boy from the neighborhood would come over to play.

Christina told her father before the visit that DiMaggio had asked to see them because he was losing the house to foreclosure and moving to Texas, where he was born.

That story appears now to have been a ruse. DiMaggio was a month behind on his mortgage payment, but his sister was going to pay it, said Spanswick, the family friend. And Texas, he said, “was the last place Jim would go. He had nothing but horrible memories there.”

Suicide plan?

DiMaggio moved to Boulevard about four years ago, according to neighbors. He lived by himself with several cats on the property that gave him a view across wide-open spaces and a ribbon of Interstate 8 toward the Anza-Borrego Desert.

The neighbors didn’t know him well. “He was just an ordinary guy,” said one, Sheila Haskett. She remembered how he came by once with a cellphone picture of a dog that had wandered into his yard. He was trying to find the owner.

Mostly the only encounters neighbors had with him were waves exchanged as he drove by on his commutes to and from Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, where he worked for the past 20 years.

The commute was more than an hour each way — “Aah, the smell of brake dust in the morning,” he wrote once on Facebook — but it was worth it to him because of the “peace and tranquillity” he felt when he was home, according to his sister, Lora Robinson.

She said he’s long loved the outdoors and was fond of camping and hiking. He climbed Mount Whitney, the Eastern Sierra peak that is the tallest in the contiguous United States.

As the week’s events unfolded, his family and friends expressed bewilderment at what he was accused of doing. They described him as someone who posted motivational quotes on Facebook, rescued animals and took pictures of sunrises. They speculated that he had been a victim of foul play, too.

“He’s the kindest person in the world,” Robinson said.

She saw no signs of distress when he visited her recently. They stayed up late, talking and laughing.

On his Facebook page, though, there were indications of loneliness. On July 8, he posted a picture of Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump with a caption that reads, “It’s funny how people say they miss you, but don’t even make an effort to even see you.”

On April 12, this: “If someone SERIOUSLY wants to be a part of your life, they will SERIOUSLY make an effort to be in it.”

Depression runs in the family, said Spanswick, a family therapist who lives in West Hollywood and manages behavioral-health centers. He said DiMaggio’s father, also named James, died in a “drug-induced” suicide 15 years ago, ending a life troubled by violence and crime.

“I don’t know what happened,” Spanswick said. “The closest I’ve come to discovering a motivation is that the day that Jim’s house was lit on fire was the 15th anniversary of Jim’s father disappearing and today (Saturday) is the 15th anniversary of Jim’s father committing suicide. So my only thought so far as a thesis or a theory is that he was potentially extremely depressed and had a suicidal plan that he had thought out and planned to execute on the anniversary of his father’s suicide.”

A brighter day

After word came from Idaho that Hannah was safe, her family gathered Saturday night at her grandparents’ home. There was a lot of rejoicing, said Campbell, Ethan’s godfather. A lot of hugs and smiles.

And a dawning realization that after a long week of tragic news — “We’ve been in purgatory,” Campbell said — today will be brighter.